The Ultimate Guide To LinkedIn Marketing

LinkedIn is a potent tool for generating leads and expanding professional networks for both users and brands alike. 

Contrary to popular belief, LinkedIn is more than just a promotional tool; it's a medium for showcasing your brand's true identity and values. When your brand remains consistent in values, messaging and actions, it builds credibility and trust among your audience. There’s immense potential for social commerce and engagement on this platform. 

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, with new social networks emerging constantly, LinkedIn is a powerful platform with a unique focus on professional networking, and its effectiveness in expanding networks makes it a powerful addition to your social media visual marketing strategy. 

This blog dives into: 

• What is LinkedIn marketing?
• Why LinkedIn marketing is important. 
• How to market on LinkedIn. 
• Types of LinkedIn posts.

What Is LinkedIn Marketing?

LinkedIn is a social media network aimed at connecting like-minded professionals. More than just a networking website, LinkedIn offers opportunities to find jobs, share inspiration and even take courses. LinkedIn marketing is when organizations use LinkedIn to promote their brand identity, share organic and paid posts to increase reach and generate leads, build relationships and drive website traffic. 

LinkedIn offers a unique opportunity to connect with professionals, showcase products or services and make valuable business relationships in a thriving and active online community.

Why LinkedIn Marketing Is Important

While LinkedIn has become an essential element of any brand's social media strategy, particularly in the B2B sector, many businesses overlook its full potential. The unique features of LinkedIn help to forge valuable connections, enhance brand awareness, refine brand identity and drive traffic to your website. 

LinkedIn's potential for organic social media marketing is evident — 96% of B2B marketers use it to promote their content, and 80% employ LinkedIn Ads to further their reach. 

In contrast, only 4% of B2C marketers turn to LinkedIn for promoting consumer brands. For B2C marketers, this means a unique and virtually competition-free opportunity to leverage the platform's advantages. 

LinkedIn accounts for more than 50% of social traffic on B2B websites and blogs. Such a significant percentage indicates that your website doesn't just attract more leads by posting on LinkedIn; it attracts leads who are more qualified and genuinely interested in your business.

How To Market On LinkedIn: 7 Tips

To succeed in LinkedIn marketing, a well-defined strategy and brand identity are paramount. Whether you want to increase brand awareness, drive engagement or expand your network, these strategies will help you harness LinkedIn’s full potential for your marketing endeavors. 

Here are seven essential strategies to enhance your LinkedIn presence. From crafting a strategic foundation to optimizing your profile and engaging your team as advocates, establish a robust professional footprint that resonates with your target audience with these tactics.  

1. Create A LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

LinkedIn marketing success begins with strategic preparation. Identifying competition, setting clear goals, crafting effective strategies, employing tactical approaches and defining measurable KPIs are essential steps to maximize your impact on the platform. 

LinkedIn marketing success begins with strategic preparation. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are vital for assessing the impact of your LinkedIn marketing efforts. Depending on your goals, KPIs could include metrics like:

• Connection Growth: Measure the increase in your LinkedIn network.
• Engagement Rate: Track likes, comments, shares, and overall engagement on your content.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Monitor the number of clicks on links in your posts.
• Follower Growth: Evaluate the growth in your LinkedIn followers.
• Conversion Rate: Assess how many LinkedIn connections become customers or business partnerships.

Your LinkedIn marketing strategies should align with your greater goals. For instance, if brand awareness is the goal, methods involve content sharing, showcasing company culture and engaging with followers. If lead generation is the focus, strategies could include targeted outreach and content with strong calls to action.

 2. Hone Your Brand Identity

A key aspect of LinkedIn marketing is building and promoting your brand identity. It offers a platform to showcase your company's values, mission and expertise. Sharing content, updates and thought leadership can help increase brand awareness, recognition and ultimately, enhance brand authenticity.

On LinkedIn, authenticity is vital. It builds credibility, influences audience perceptions, and drives engagement. In an interconnected world, LinkedIn offers an opportunity to establish and nurture trust through a clearly defined brand identity.

Your brand's voice on LinkedIn should align with its personality and the values it stands for. Whether you're professional and authoritative or friendly and approachable, maintaining a consistent tone is essential. A clear voice and tone help your audience understand and relate to your brand. 

Of course, brand identity extends to your visual assets as well — how do you want your brand to look online? A consistent visual identity, combined with a unique voice, will make your brand identity.  

3. Optimize Your Profile 

In LinkedIn’s competitive landscape, it’s critical to optimize your profile with social media SEO best practices. This will help your brand’s LinkedIn profile appear during online searches, both on Google and LinkedIn itself. 

What does this look like on LinkedIn? To optimize your profile, ensure your entire ‘About’ section is complete, including: 

• A brief overview of your organization consistent with your brand voice. 
• Your industry. 
• Company size — in this section, LinkedIn will also link to associated members of this organization. Encourage employees to create LinkedIn profiles or update them to reflect their current workplace. Their demographics will also feature on LinkedIn under the ‘People’ tab on your profile. 
• Headquarters.
• Year founded.  
• A link to your website (ensuring any required UTM parameters are present)
• Your location. 

Beyond these steps, try to incorporate keywords related to your industry’s niche in your overview and use these and relevant hashtags when making posts. Another great optimization feature on LinkedIn is the ability to add alt text to your images. These don’t appear to users — however, Google can see them, and this can help your images appear in image-based search results. 

4. Post Unique Content

If you create content for your website — from blogs and webinars to news and more — you should share this on LinkedIn. If your strategy narrowly targets LinkedIn, your team might also want to explore creating unique, new content for LinkedIn that offers professional tips or highlights your brand’s achievements.

LinkedIn stands out among social networks for its longer content lifespan, which is a huge benefit to creating unique content just for this channel. Unlike platforms demanding round-the-clock posting, LinkedIn rewards consistency. Develop a posting schedule that aligns with your audience's activity. Monitor engagement patterns over a month and adapt your schedule accordingly, focusing on the days and times yielding the best results.

You need to understand your brand audience to connect authentically on LinkedIn. Tailor your content and engagement to meet their needs, interests and pain points. Doing so demonstrates that your brand is genuinely interested in providing value to its followers.

5. Shared LinkedIn URL In Alternate Marketing Channels 

To increase your brand's reach on LinkedIn, customize your LinkedIn public profile URL. To do this, click the pencil icon next to ‘Public profile & URL’ on your profile, and select ‘Edit your custom URL,’ then ‘Edit.’  

Creating a unique URL not only looks more professional but also makes it easy to share. This custom URL can be added to email signatures, business cards, social media profiles and email marketing campaigns, making it simple for people to connect. 

Here is how to customize your LinkedIn page URL: 

• Go to your Page super admin view.
• Click ‘Edit page’ in the left menu.
• Click ‘Page info’ in the upper left of the Edit pane.
• Click the LinkedIn Public URL box and type the new name.
• Click the ‘Save’ button in the upper-right corner.

6. Incorporate Rich Media In Your Content Mix

Visual elements play a crucial role in brand identity and earn six times more engagement than text-only content. 

Your profile picture, cover image and content visuals should align with your brand's visual identity. Consistency in color schemes, typography and imagery helps create a cohesive and recognizable brand image.

Embed images, videos, rich media and slides within your content. These elements break up the text, making the content more engaging and visually appealing. You can also include a cover image at the beginning of your article for added visual impact.

7. Encourage Others To Share Posts

While brand presence on LinkedIn is imperative, the magic often happens when employees become advocates and ambassadors for your LinkedIn presence. 

Brands can internally encourage their employees to share posts. They can take this further and pre-write post copy to make it effortless to repost.

People are more likely to engage with content when shared by individuals they know. Employee advocacy allows your brand's message to reach a broader audience through the personal connections of your employees. This means more likes, comments and shares.

Types Of LinkedIn Posts

Content marketing is critical for LinkedIn marketing. Posting valuable content, including articles, videos and updates, can establish your authority in your industry. It's also an effective method for driving traffic to your website, blog or other online assets.

LinkedIn, unlike other platforms, offers a plethora of ways to share content. Brands can share photos, videos, documents and more to generate interest — and leads. This is a great way to repurpose content and make the most of your content mix. These are the various LinkedIn posts you can make:

Text-Only

Text-only posts on LinkedIn are a valuable addition to your content plan, offering quick impact, opportunities for deeper engagement and the ability to convey information concisely and interactively. To maximize their effectiveness, consider starting with an engaging opener and incorporating emojis when suitable for your message and brand image.

Text posts can be a powerful tool for driving engagement and growing community. You can pose questions to spark discussions or use lists to convey takeaways, successes, or ways to assist your audience. This interactivity encourages comments and conversations.

Single-Image

LinkedIn posts that incorporate at least one image typically receive double the number of comments compared to text-only posts. This means that single-image posts on LinkedIn are more effective in capturing the audience's attention swiftly, and an eye-catching visual can convey a rich story more efficiently than text alone.

High-quality visuals, adhering to optimal image sizes (a minimum of 552 x 276 pixels and a maximum of 5MB) and providing context through text all contribute to a compelling image post. Additionally, accessibility features like alt text expand your content's reach, making it inclusive for all users. 

Multi-Image 

Multi-image posts showcase multiple images in a static collage. Each image in multi-image posts contributes to a broader message. By including accompanying text in the alt description and caption, you can guide your audience and ensure they understand the story or information you share. By sharing a series of images, you create a more captivating narrative that encourages viewers to spend more time with your post.

Native Videos

Video is the best-performing content type on LinkedIn. LinkedIn reports that video drives five times more engagement than any other content type in the app and 20 times more shares.

Video can convey emotions and make a more personal connection with your audience. It enables you to tell a richer and more engaging story, fostering a deeper level of engagement.

Native videos on LinkedIn automatically start playing as users scroll through their feeds. This feature captures viewers' attention and encourages them to pause and watch. Unlike embedded videos, native LinkedIn videos don't require users to click a link to view the content.

While videos can be up to 15 minutes long, it's advisable to prioritize short-form videos, typically between 30 and 60 seconds. Shorter videos are more likely to capture viewers' attention and often perform better than longer ones.

Documents 

Users can upload Word documents, PDFs and PowerPoint presentations to LinkedIn. This is a great way to share ungated white papers, reports and more. 

Image Carousel

Image carousel posts are a way to display multiple images in a sequence that members can swipe through rather than viewing as a multi-image collage. However, LinkedIn deprecated its support for carousel post types in June 2023.

This is unfortunate because carousels provide an interactive way to present multiple images that users must swipe through to see. This is effective for a 'set up and reveal' type post or for breaking information into bite-sized chunks. 

Fortunately, there is a workaround that allows users to continue to post carousels on LinkedIn. By using the document post type and adhering to these guidelines, you can replicate the carousel post experience on LinkedIn, creating engaging and informative content accessible to your audience.

• A document file in PDF, PowerPoint, or DOC/DOCX format.
• The document can have a maximum of 300 pages.
• The file size should be less than 100MB.
• While you can use either page orientation, brands should use A4 or US letter size with landscape orientation for better visibility.

Articles 

LinkedIn’s 'Article' post type allows users to post editorial-style articles. When you publish an article on LinkedIn, your followers and supporters can easily comment and share it with their networks. 

Organizations can use articles to share various content, including announcements, campaign details, thought leadership pieces and educational insights. This versatility allows you to inform and educate your audience effectively.

End your article with a compelling question or call-to-action to drive engagement and encourage your readers to take specific next steps.

Newsletters 

Organizations can post a unique newsletter on LinkedIn to share industry information, news or education about a particular topic. Newsletters on LinkedIn aren’t necessarily newsletters in the typical sense — they appear as articles. However, users can subscribe to these, which makes them great for recurring, informative articles, especially if they’re relevant to work life. Some of the ‘top picks’ from LinkedIn’s news team include newsletters about enhancing your visibility online, boosting resilience and perspective and how to jumpstart creativity. 

Polls

Polls on LinkedIn are a powerful tool for social marketers. They offer quick engagement, provide audience insights and are often used for educational content.

Polls are also a swift and easy way to generate engagement as they capture the audience's attention and encourage them to participate, fostering interaction with your content. You can use polls to gain valuable information about your audience, inquire about the type of content they'd like to see, gather their opinions on industry trends or quiz them on fun facts related to your brand. This not only engages them but also helps you tailor your content to their preferences.

Avoid ’setting and forgetting’ LinkedIn polls. LinkedIn allows you to see who participated in the poll and their answers. This data lets you follow up with respondents, creating a deeper connection with your audience. Additionally, people can comment on the poll, and you can respond to their comments to stimulate further engagement.

Celebrations 

Celebrations provide an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate various occasions, milestones and achievements. This not only creates a positive and supportive environment but also helps in sharing important updates with your audience.

By tagging relevant people and pages when celebrating occasions or welcoming new team members, you encourage engagement and networking. It brings people together, fostering connections and interactions within your LinkedIn community.

Recognizing milestones, welcoming team members and using personalization with celebrations can drive engagement, boost employee morale and strengthen your network of connections.

FAQs

How to market on LinkedIn? 

There are a few ways to market your brand on LinkedIn, including: 

• Optimize Your Profile: Ensure your LinkedIn profile is complete, professional, and aligned with your brand. Use a clear profile picture and a compelling headline.
• Create Quality Content: Publish relevant and engaging content regularly. Utilize text posts, single-image posts, multi-image posts, videos, and articles to reach your audience.
• Utilize Video: Leverage the power of video content to tell stories, engage your audience, and drive interactions.
• Engage with Your Network: Actively participate in discussions, join relevant groups, and engage with your network's content.
• Leverage Analytics: Monitor your LinkedIn analytics to understand what's working and refine your strategy accordingly.

Does LinkedIn marketing work? 

Yes, LinkedIn marketing can be highly effective when executed correctly. LinkedIn provides a unique platform for B2B marketing, professional networking, and brand building. It's beneficial for businesses targeting a professional audience. By consistently sharing quality content, engaging with your network, and utilizing LinkedIn advertising, you can achieve your marketing goals, whether they involve lead generation, brand awareness, or thought leadership.

How to become a LinkedIn marketing partner? 

A LinkedIn marketing partner is a tool or software integrated with LinkedIn — these examples of LinkedIn partners include Animoto, an online video editing software and BlueMelon, an Australian communications agency. One in five LinkedIn advertisers use partners to manage ads, while a partner automates 58% of LinkedIn leads.

While most social media managers don’t have to worry about becoming a LinkedIn partner, you might be curious about how a brand becomes one. Generally speaking, LinkedIn looks at your overall organization (think brand identity, reputation and more) and its technical capabilities to determine suitable partners.